Jon eses

ly ped utleg

ONE criterion for judging a social survey

111 whether it shakes or dislodges fixed ideas. IA does this elegantly and with economy, so rin the better. The latest of the four volumes trod the Institute of Community Studies conies well on these counts. It is a study of Wc. odf°.,v on the Essex border of London, chosen becaar of its high proportion of middle-class WO' around 60 per cent. on the basis of occuPatil The idea was to compare it with working-6i' Bethnal Green, especially in respect of killshir.0 ties, which previously published inquiries 0 Institute showed to be strong there and 41 the authors expected to be weaker in WoodIPA The difference, though real, was much less tbr they had thought. And Woodford failed to c)! firm the stereotype of a middle-class suburb P a number of other interesting ways. Bethnal Green, densely settled and virtn3tt one class, makes a- good contrast with 1°/t,, density, class-divided Woodford, but both It' relatively ripe examples of their respective st# of life. Slum and suburb have each mellowed it° something different from their prevailing indof The out-county estate for the rehousing ' Bethnal Greeners described in the antil°° previous book had not, in the five or six Y'rg of its existence, had time to acquire a 004 of its own. Perhaps communities which hit; grown as the result of many individual eli°it"...4 arc more likely to develop a belief in themsel7f than those hurriedly created by the exigc neje' I large-scale redevelopment. That at any rate be another hypothesis to confirm or demolisti!') '.1 Although younger couples in Woodford tf not see their parents and other relatives 3 as ffrol quently as in Bethnal Green', the propel-60.d Al people above pension age who had a marr child living either with them or near If efil Yip almost identical in both boroughs. Thougl1.0. middle-class families most of the grown-up ch1 a ren move away from home, it seems that at ley one of them stays behind, comes back or arrant for an old parent to join them. 'The old felt thil could call on their children, the children , they should respond. "When they've brought up," said Mr. Burgess, "you feel you've 10," certain amount of moral obligation to tbe This sense of filial duty is as strong in one..„Iii trict as another.' Even the old people wittl'o children of their own in most cases find a nel/ti' or niece or other relative to live with. 1101 The people of Woodford, it seems, are f lacking in family piety. Moreover they 'felt tbeoo belonged to a friendly, helpful community 3140,1'1 as unanimously as the people of Bethnal 6- pi thus contradicting 'a fashionable stereotYPeoir the suburb—anxious, footloose migrants, 5°' how keeping themselves.to themselves and yet up with the Joneses.' In the suburb there is less enlPhasis on kinship and, perhaps by way of corn- Pchsa

tion, more on friendship, than in the slums.

deliberate cultivation of 'friendship.' the Yoh, lg couples of Woodford 'create, with people

Of

their own age. a group—sometimes small, sometimes large—with functions somewhat

similar to those of the East End extended, family. It is

Organised, as the extended family is. by the u:enien, the husbands being drawn into it in a irilitur, sort of way. Its basis is not the kinship tic between mother and daughter, but the bond Of common interest between wives with young child l'en.' Perhaps there is an emerging pattern of .,isierhoods of young wives, and of increasingly domesticated house-centred husbands. This trend. with its parallels in the United States and else- 4er,., invites further investigation. Peter Willmott and Michael Young took three Years over this study. They depended 'mainly but tat entirely' on interviews. Especially fruitful-of quotations and local colour were the more inten- sive interviews with a small but random sample

Of

forty-four married people with two or more .,elniclren under fifteen. 'We also tried to keep eyes op liner en . . . and observed as much of 2st as we could about Woodford people in hublieplaces like streets, shops and trains.' They more of human interest than they had anticipated, as in the honest exploration of any quo., whaan group they were almost bound to do. t they most missed in Woodford as corn- Pared with Bethnal Green was 'the informal col- lective life' of the street. the pub and the open-

air

inarket. In Bethnal Green 'there is the sort of bantering warmth in public which is reserved in oodford for the home.' Class division in Wood- (cIrd. they suggest. deprives a third of the popula- atio of the unquestioning self-respect which is 'tal psychological need' and which can be Preserved in a cohesive, one-class community. Naturally in the middle class, too, there are grad- ations. 'Some of the people we meet seem to be a bit snooty,' an underwriter's wife is quoted s'Yolg. and there are references to 'knowing the t"I people' and 'being in with the Churchill Iti°1)'—Woodford, of course, being Sir Winston's , whs.: Liuency. But the impression that emerges from the place is of a middle class sufficiently unlo.geneous to make its members 'friendly' and 'ufklently affluent to make themselves extremely

t

comfortable. There is little in this book of the penalties of deviance : of suicide, divorce and anomie. Perhaps these phenomena do not exist or are not important in Woodford. But for what it does tell us, concisely, modestly and readably, of Woodfordian social norms and family be-' haviour, I am grateful to the authors of this book. It is to its credit that it should suggest that there is still much to be explored in the latter-day suburb.

CHARLES MADGE